On the Iraqi campaign to avoid the likely American attack

News reports said that Iraq has started an intensive diplomatic campaign in order to prevent the launching of the US attack against it.

Analysts on the Iraqi issue said that Iraq is militarily much weaker than it was during the Gulf war in 1991, noting that the destructive war and the sanctions imposed on it since 12 years means that the available military options before Saddam Hussein is very limited.

Diplomats in the area said that the Iraqis are using all the cards they do have in an attempt to avoid the confrontation, using temptations of trade deals and simultaneously escalate the implications of such an attack on the security of the region and the economic interests of the neighboring countries and Europe as a means to foil war plans.

The Iraqi analyst Mustafa Allani who lives in London said that Iraq feels that there is no way to change the American stand and therefore Iraq has only to work at the regional level in order to make the American mission more difficult, noting their ( the Iraqi) attempts with Syria, Turkey and Saudi Arabia in order to neutralize the American institutions on their territories and to postpone the attack in the hope that something will take place in the region.

Allai said that the basic Iraqi strategy has not changed. He explained that the Iraqis believe that permitting the return back of the inspectors will cause a crisis on the nature of their activity, used by the US as " legitimate pretext " to launch an attack against Iraq.